Believe it or not, this excursion into Paul’s first Corinthian letter does have bearing on the overall subject of the letter to Laodicea. When we have completed this portion of the analysis, having made our way through what appears to be most of the relevant material, we will be able to return to Revelation, to come to a useful conclusion full of objective and practice-informing understanding. This will be accomplished through our having taken great pains to hear the words to the Laodicean church within their historical, social, and theological context, rather than our own.
Unfortunately, context is quite often neglected when it comes to Paul’s treatment of communion in the letter to Corinth. So often, when we hear the passage referenced or quoted, the reference picks up at the twenty-third verse. There, Paul writes, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed took bread, and after He had given thanks He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way, He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, every time you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (11:23-26). These are the words that are regularly spoken to create the familiar setting in which we partake of the elements of the table.
When this happens, we treat the words of the Apostle as if they were some type of instruction manual on how to engage in this practice. In a sense, that is true, but that is only a part of the story. Do we take the time to look at what precedes the “instructions”? Sadly, no. Like we do in so many other situations, like that of the letter to Laodicea, we have a tendency to simply pull things out of context and use them for our own purposes, reading into the text that which we want to see there. Such sloppy and shabby treatment of the Scriptures results in reading the letter to Laodicea as an ahistorical and entirely subjective “spiritual temperature check” (hot, cold, lukewarm), and hearing part of Jesus’ words there (I stand at the door and knock) as an offer of salvation, rather than as words of warning to a congregation that were rooted in history and which were meant to be understood objectively by the recipients in a way that would have an effect on their practice as they went about their primary responsibility of serving as ambassadors of the kingdom of God. Making reference to the “instruction” portion of chapter eleven, without making reference to what comes before or after, has us doing the same thing here as so often happens with everything in Revelation. We make it ahistorical and subjective, and thereby cause ourselves to miss out on the aspects of the kingdom of heaven, and on the reference to Jesus’ meal practice that was so instructive and important for the early community of believers.
Now, it must be said that what comes after is regularly incorporated into the practice of communion. The “words of warning,” as they are generally viewed, are usually included, so as to induce introspection among potential participants. We read “For this reason, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself first, and in this way let him eat the bread and drink of the cup. For the one who eats and drinks without careful regard for the body eats and drinks judgment against himself. That is why many of you are weak and sick, and quite a few are dead. But if we examined ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world” (11:27-32).
These “words of warning” have been appended to the “instructions” for good reason. However, the way in which they are presented, and in which they are urged to be taken, removes them from their practical and objective context, as participants are usually asked to apply this warning individually, as related to their personal salvation, with considerations of personal and individual judgment falling if one doesn’t have the right mindset in one’s taking of the elements or the right understanding of what the bread and the cup represent. Pretending that Paul has such things in mind is unsatisfactory, and it ignores the corrective action that Paul is taking, first and foremost, with this church, as it fails to follow the example of Jesus and fails to understand that Paul is criticizing this church for their failure to embody the kingdom of heaven. In addition, the encouragement to come to these words individually and personally, as if the recipients of this letter were silently reading their Bible for themselves, in their studies, rather than hearing the letter read out loud to the entire congregation, has had a hand in creating an unreasonable and Scripturally insupportable expectation of some type of Christian perfectionism, and a need for confession of personal “sins” after a personal examination of the condition of one’s heart (perhaps whether one is hot, cold, or lukewarm?) before taking communion.
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